In the middle-zone

Now that I’ve lived here for about three years, I’m starting to notice what it is line when the temperature and altitude just vary a few degrees. I’m down in that valley you see below, but a little bit up on the hill. When it starts to rain, I can go outside and figure out how high up the snow (more or less) is going to accumulate. Down the road from us, it’s about 150 lower, so sometimes we accumulate snow and they do not. It’s so interesting living in a vertical climate! I’m sure many of you are used to this… but growing up in the plains of Texas makes this a totally new experience!

Daily Photo – Walking Back Home from Skipper's Canyon

When my friends Cliff and Cher were here, I took them on a little jaunt over the mountain to Skipper's Canyon. A fresh snow had fallen, but it only fell up here on the top bit of it all. It was so lovely with the white above and the lushness down in the valley below, so I stopped to grab this photo.

The New Show Starts in 3 Days!

Come Find Out More and Support the Show! You can get in on the fun for just 1 penny! Any little bit is awesome! And if you put in $1, you’ll get to see the show a week early! The Premiere episode is going to be Monday, Nov 17 at 6 PM PT, 9 PM ET. See you soon!

The Behind-the-Scenes with Air New Zealand Video hits tomorrow!

Curtis tells me that tomorrow (Friday), we are releasing a special Behind-The-Scenes video with Air New Zealand. I spent a few days here at the Hobbiton Movie Set and we recorded the whole thing… it’s a really cool video and you can see how I set up all the shots, worked with the models, selected my composition, and helped to lay out the scenes.

Update: Released!

Here’s the video. If you wanna see the full 40-minute loooong version, just go sign up here StuckInCustoms.com/Hobbit (it’s free, and merged into our normal monthly newsletter).

Glenorchy Cafe

If you do ever head out to Glenorchy, be sure to eat at the rather generically named “Glenorchy Cafe” — it’s super tasty! We go there every time… and there is some very evil desserts there too that are not to be missed!

Daily Photo – Scarlett on the Path

Here's Scarlett posing (again!) on this amazing walkway in Glenorchy. We actually went out there as a family for Mother's Day, but when I take Scarlett's photo, she prefers to be by herself so that all the attention is right there on her! She's a non-stop posing machine… so funny… girls!

Want to see the Behind-the-Scenes video?

I did a fun photoshoot with Air New Zealand, and some of the photos are just now starting to come out. We also made a cool behind-the-scenes video there, which we will release for free to newsletter subscribers (which is also free!)

The Most Beautiful Newsletter Ever!

Here’s one of the unofficial, behind-the-scenes photos I took in between scenes… That’s Rosanna there – I love the elf ears!

Daily Photo – The Seats on Air New Zealand

I set this shot up in New Zealand… it was pretty challenging to shoot, but you'll see more in the behind-the-scenes video! But I'm very happy with the way it turned out…

You can also see my friend Brian Matiash trying sushi for the first time… some craziness at a Marble Slab Creamery, some street photography in Harajuku, and other random things like me breaking into a maid cafe because I was too lazy (and embarrassed) to stand in line!

Tide App?

Does anyone know of or use a good app to keep track of tides near your location? I always forget to check when I am near beaches… and then I get there and wish there was a quick way to look! It would be even better if it could download the info and it was available offline since I often don’t have internet at remote locations!

Daily Photo – Reflections at Milford Sound

One of the coolest bits of visiting Milford Sound is all the little reflection pools that appear in low tide. It's usually hard to get a perfectly clear reflection of Mitre Peak off the waters of the fjords because of winds. Sometimes in the morning it is still, but usually not. But there are at least ten or so of these little reflective pools around and about. On this particular day, I was lucky to get that moon in position over the peak! What are the odds?!?! Not high I tell you!

Categories

Down below I mention that I have several shots from Milford Sound here on the blog. Don’t forget you can click on “Milford Sound” right under the title there to see all the photos!

Daily Photo – Dragon Teeth

You've now seen me post MANY shots from Milford Sound down here on the South Island of New Zealand. It's such an awesome place, and I enjoy trying to do “new” photographic things while down there. As you can imagine, there's nothing wrong with a straight-up shot, but I thought of this sort of idea on my most recent sojourn down there!

A great blog post

New Post on the Flatbooks Blog

Did you know that we started a new blog over at Flatbooks? We’re posting articles full of tips & tricks from our authors over there. A new one just went up from Scott Wyden Kivowitz on neutral density filters.

We also have a new Facebook page as well – make sure you follow it to get all the latest!

Daily Photo – Walking on an Alien Surface

I don't know if I could ever find this place again! But wow, it was so cool!

I was about 25 minutes outside of Te Anau, and I pulled over to take a break. I walked over a little hillock and saw this massive sea of hot yellow sponge on the ground. It was amazing! It was SO SOFT to walk on… each footstep had me sink down about 2 inches! It then sprang back up, good as new. I even laid down on it for a while to watch the clouds soar overhead… oh New Zealand, you are full of surprises!

Beaming Into the Geekhouse

Here’s a video clip of an appearance I made a few weeks ago when I virtually visited Cali and John at their new Geekhouse. Here’s more on their website!

Daily Photo – Hay it is Flooding

Okay that may be one of my dumbest photo titles ever, but I'm gonna stick with it.

We had a ton of rain here in Central Otago at the end of winter so there was quite a bit of flooding. Flooding is the wrong word, really… it never really got into houses or over roads or anything… just a TON of ponds everywhere because it is so hilly here. I was driving by this area and saw the hay with the perfect reflections, so I jumped out of the car to try to find a good angle on things…

The Arcanum, a Game Changer

Daily Photo – Into Skipper's Canyon

I'm embarrassed to admit two things. The second I just realized.

The first is that this place here, Skipper's Canyon, is literally 15 minutes from my home here in New Zealand and it took me over a year to find it! I felt so lame when I finally realized where it was and why people talked about it so much. It's worthy of a lot more exploration I think!

The second thing I just realized is that my whole life I've never really spelled “embarrassed” correctly. If it wasn't for that red squiggly, I would always mess it up!

Five Days of New Tips/Tricks Videos on the Blog! Day Four!

This was shot inside the Beijing Planning Museum. This sounds like a boring place eh? But it’s not! You can see how I chose to compose this shot…

Processing like Cooking

I had a great time processing this photo. I had no idea what I was going to do with it and started with half an idea. I’m not sure I could ever process this photo exactly like this again… I try new stuff all the time. I was thinking that processing photos is a lot like cooking food in that you never get exactly the same dish twice. But maybe my processing is much more extreme than that! I dunno… anyway, perhaps it is an apt analogy.

Daily Photo – A Pair of Winter Trees

I don't know what drew me to these trees! I was driving around with some friends and suddenly I pulled over and jumped over a fence to go to these trees. I'm sure my friends thought I was crazy! Maybe it's because I've been looking for an interesting pair of trees by themselves for so long. Anyhoo, I was obviously super-happy to find these two!